Comic outside Europe and the United States

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Japan

Schematic reading direction for Japanese manga

In Japan, a tradition of Japanese woodcuts arose in the 16th century , which was the model for a series of grotesque drawings by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai in the 19th century , comparable to da Vinci's grotesques . Hokusai called it Manga. This term is still used today for Japanese-style comics.

Japan's comic industry is one of the largest in the world. Since the mid- 1980s , the so-called mangas have also become increasingly popular in the West.

In contrast to Western comics and South Korean Manhwa, Japanese mangas are read from back to front in the booklets and from right to left on the respective pages, as illustrated in the diagram opposite.

China

Chinese picture stories, so-called lianhuanhua (连环画, chain pictures ), have a long tradition as in Japan. However, they have only had their name since 1925, when the first specifically so-called works came onto the market in Shanghai . After the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, lianhuanhua were used as an important educational medium in the sense of communist ideology, above all the Mao Zedong ideas on literature and art (Yan'an 1942), and distributed nationwide in large numbers. For example, in 1982 the total circulation of all lianhuanhua was an estimated 860 million copies.

South Korea

The South Korean manhwa are heavily influenced by the Japanese manga style. However, unlike Japanese manga, they are read in the western reading direction (from top left to bottom right). 2005 was Korea , especially South Korea host country of the Frankfurt Book Fair , the manhwa as a focus.

Comics in Africa

Although comics are relatively widespread in some African countries (especially Kenya and Tanzania ), the African comic scene is extremely unknown outside the continent. In Tanzania, for example, up to 40 comic magazines have appeared over the decades.

Specifically African comic strips have been around for 30 to 40 years, analogous to the degree of political independence and the swelling and waning waves of press freedom . South Africa has a much older tradition. Both the rulers and the oppressed had been producing cartoons and comic strips since printing presses and printing machines were in the country. The most famous contemporary South African comic strip is called Madam and Eve and can be viewed on the Internet without any problems.

Typical of African comic magazines are their short lifespan and short range, which make a detailed inventory practically impossible.

Zazou stayed the longest with ten issues in the Ivory Coast , the Journal De La Lutte Contre Les Mauvaises Moeurs De La Societé with the Archbishop of Bangui as editor, Gringrin in Mali as a monthly magazine for children or the bimonthly Cocotier by Hans Kwaaitaal in the Republic of Gabon . In the Democratic Republic of the Congo , which was also known as Zaire from 1971 to 1997, the magazine Afro BD appeared in four issues , from which the successor Africanissimo emerged . Well-known draftsmen are O. Bakouta-Batakpa, Boyau, Mongo Sissé, Barly Baruti, Tchibemaba Ngandou, Assimba Bathy, Lepa Mabila Saye, as well as Thembo, Makonga, Pat Masioni, Fifi Mukuna, Luva or Badika as youngsters. The annual African Comic Strip Festival in Libreville / Gabon, which is abbreviated to JABD , now ensures a certain supra-regional continuity .

The perpetual lack of quality paper is making digital editions more and more important. It is they that can easily be viewed in Internet cafés without having to be printed out for expensive money. The best example is the South African comic Antony And The Race Day Challenge , which is being distributed extensively in Portable Document Format (PDF) by a well-known bank . The Nelson Mandela Foundation certainly has a decisive share in paper consumption . In October 2005 a mammoth comic began to be published in nine volumes of 28 pages about the life and work of Nelson Mandela and his companions. More than a million copies of the first episode were distributed free to schools, newspaper supplements, and miners.

Comics in Iran

Comics are also widespread in Iran, but their plot is much more oriented towards religious topoi.

  • In "99", Islamic superheroes search for the 99 stones of knowledge to save the world.
  • The Iranian comic author Marjane Satrapi , now living in French exile, described her childhood under the sign of the revolution in her home country in the highly acclaimed comic Persepolis . Taunt describes a conversation between the women in her family, in which their life situation is presented.

rest of the world

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ sueddeutsche.de Burka instead of Batmobile
  2. ^ Trouble in Tehran

See also